About
A contractor that employs an architect
T-Bone Construction, Inc. has been building commercial and institutional buildings in the Pikes Peak region since 1986. The unusual thing about it is not its size or its age. It is that the design team is in the building.
01The company
Three dates, all checkable: established 1986, incorporated in Colorado 1993, licensed with the Pikes Peak Regional Building Department since 1996.
It is a commercial general contractor working under NAICS 236220, of 10–19 people, run by Michael R. Thibault, owner and president. The work is new commercial buildings, tenant improvements, additions and renovations, and site work and utilities, in the aviation, retail, automotive and industrial sectors.
What makes it different, stated precisely
The firm carries its own architectural design team, including a licensed architect, alongside the construction operation. At a firm of this size that is genuinely unusual, and it is the single thing worth understanding about how we work.
It is worth being exact about what that claim is, because the imprecise version would be false. T-Bone Construction, Inc. is a contractor that employs a licensed architect. The company is not itself licensed as an architect, and nothing anywhere on this site says it is. What we offer is integrated design and construction — design-build — with the design capability in-house rather than subcontracted.
The practical consequence is set out at length on the architect inside, and it comes down to one thing: on a conventionally delivered project the owner pays for the gap between what was drawn and what can be built, because that gap belongs to neither party. Here it belongs to us.
What we self-perform
Site work and utilities, millwork, electrical, and our own trucking. On a commercial project of this size the schedule is lost in the gaps between trades rather than during the work, and a contractor who owns four of those trades owns four of the gaps.
Four is not everything and we do not pretend otherwise. Mechanical, fire protection, roofing, structural steel erection and specialty finishes are subcontracted to specialists who do only that, which is the right answer for all of them. The full division, with four ways to check it.
Who the work is for
Owners of commercial buildings and businesses who need a building or a substantial alteration and have no in-house construction department. Institutional and public owners with a board to satisfy and no appetite for a change-order surprise at eighty per cent complete. Tenants with a lease date that has already been signed. And brokers, lenders and developers who need a realistic number for a deal that has not closed yet.
All four are buying the same thing in different words: certainty about a number and a date, at a scale where hiring a separate architect, a separate engineer and a separate general contractor is more coordination than the project justifies.
The region
Four things about building here catch out firms from elsewhere, every time. The design wind loads along the Front Range. Hail, and what it does to a roof and glazing selection that was ordinary somewhere else. Expansive soils in parts of this region, which change the foundation system entirely. And the earthwork season, which is shorter than the calendar suggests, so that missing it costs a winter rather than a month.
None of that is exotic to anybody who has built here for nearly forty years. All of it is expensive to learn on your project.
T-Bone Construction, Inc.
1310 Ford StColorado Springs, CO 80915- Telephone
- (719) 570-1456
- [email protected]
- Hours
- Mon–Fri 7:30 AM–4:30 PM MT
- Licence
- PPRBD licensed since 1996, number on request
- Established
- 1986
Registration
- Legal name
- T-Bone Construction, Inc.
- Principal
- Michael R. Thibault, Owner and President
- Established
- 1986
- Incorporated
- Colorado, 1993
- Licensed
- PPRBD, since 1996
- Size
- 10–19 people
- NAICS
- 236220 (2022)
Our contractor licence number and the staff architect’s state licence number are given on request and can be checked with the issuing bodies directly. Do that with every firm you are considering, including this one.
02Not claimed
What this website deliberately does not say
Every item below is something a contractor’s website normally asserts. None is on this one, and the reason is the same each time: you cannot check it from a web page, and the people reading this are frequently buying on behalf of a board that is specifically required to check things.
| Not published here | Ask for this instead |
|---|---|
| Project photographs | An address you can drive to, and the owner’s telephone number |
| Client names and logos | References you contact rather than ones we select |
| Dollar volume and project counts | A statement of work in progress right now, and who is assigned to yours |
| Bonding capacity | A letter from our surety addressed to you, for your project |
| Safety statistics and EMR | The figure on a prequalification form, with the insurer who calculated it |
| Awards and certification badges | Nothing. Ask the last three owners whether the superintendent was on site |
| Licence and registration numbers | Given on request, to check with the issuing body yourself |
| “Quality, integrity, on time, on budget” | A schedule of values, a schedule with a critical path, and a list of allowances |
What this site publishes instead is the thing almost nobody in commercial construction publishes: budget ranges by building type, with the basis stated and the soft costs listed separately. An owner who has to put a number in front of a board months before there is a drawing can use that. A photograph of somebody else’s finished building does not help them at all.
03Choosing
Four questions to ask every contractor
Including us. If a firm cannot answer these on a first call, that is information about the firm.
- Who is the superintendent on my project, and can I speak to them now? Then ask their last three owners whether that person was actually on site.
- How much work are you running right now, and where does mine sit? A firm of this size with four projects behind yours is a scheduling problem you should know about.
- What is in your contingency and what is it for? A number with no stated contingency is not a more confident number, it is a less honest one.
- Tell me about a project that went badly. Everyone has one. What you are listening for is whether they tell you, and what they did about it.
Ask us the four questions
Telephone and put them to us directly. We would rather be measured against that list than against a gallery of photographs, and if the answers send you to a different firm, that is a good outcome for you and it costs us a job we should not have won.
T-Bone Construction, Inc. · 1310 Ford St, Colorado Springs, CO 80915